Open Source Blog

Daniel Robbins has a unique insight into the potential for Microsoft to release Office on Linux. As his profile states, he is "the guy who created Gentoo Linux [and] worked for Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group".

He doesn't think that Stuart Cohen's opinion that Office for Linux is 'inevitable' holds any water.

"Stuart, Stuart, Stuart.

Stuart!!!!" he writes.

"Sorry, it's not going to happen."

There are a number of reasons, such as the fact that Microsoft offers Office for Mac is irrelevant (originating as it does from an entirely different market landscape and the fact that profit and anti-trust concerns keep it alive).

Another is the fact that offering Office for Linux would give it huge credibility that it just does not warrant (especially when compared with Linux on the server), while Daniel also maintains that "if Microsoft did release Office for Linux, even if it were free, no one would use it."

I would argue that there are a number of sectors (government in particular) where there would be some demand for Office on Linux, but by and large the prediction is believable. It's pretty safe to assume that the majority of current desktop Linux users are free software advocates, who would be opposed to allowing Microsoft on to their machines.

Even in the government and education sectors where there have been some successes for open source on the desktop, the movement is applications first (Firefox, OpenOffice.org) and then Linux, not Linux and then applications.

Which brings us on to Glyn Moody's excellent article in Linux Journal on FOOGL, which describes the shift to open source, starting with Firefox, and moving through OpenOffice.org on Windows, and finally to GNU/Linux.

"It is why, in some sense, the shift to the GNU/Linux desktop can be said to be already underway," writes Glyn, "since it is an incremental move that begins by moving to Firefox and OpenOffice.org, but remaining on Windows. The last step – moving to GNU/Linux – has not happened yet in large numbers, but it could do, once one remaining obstacle is removed."

As he notes, however, one major application is currently missing from FOOGL, a decent (enterprise class) cross-platform email client with calendaring capabilities. The Lightning extension to Thunderbird might be an option, as might Chandler or Evolution now that it has a Windows port.

But where does that leave us? FLOOGL? FOOTGL? FOOCGL? FOOGLE?

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